My Sony Vaio Pocket Hell

garthv

Ok,
Well I purchased a Sony Vaio Pocket about 4 months ago. Got a great deal off Cyberport.De and had the player within 3 days.

This is when the trouble starts......
Firstly I open that box and start to charge it up, while having a galnce over the manual I noticed that it doesnt support mp3's. All it does is convert any mp3's to Sony's horrible ATRAC3plus format. Luckily for me I found the firmware upgrade to support mp3's. Banged this onto the machine and everything seemed to be running grand.

I was walking to work one day, listening to my Vaio pocket and all of a sudden it sounded like a tape getting stuck in the player. My Vaio pocket broke for the first time. So I got into work and had a quick gander around the vaio-link site. This told me to reset my player, which I did and everything worked grand until I went home. On my way home to exact same thing happened and I couldnt even switch the player off. Got home and rang Sony tech support to see what they would say

In all honesty, the guys at the helpdesk are really nice and they seemed to know what they were talking about. Anyway, I sent the player off for the first time to France (Sony VAIO HQ), courtesy of DHL. DHL took 5 days to get out to my house, leave a few boxes and then another 3 days to pick up the boxes with the player inside them, not Sony's fault but they still should of kept a tab on DHL.

3 weeks and many phone calls later my player arrives back. Everything seemed to be hunky dory so I went on my way. Not my lucky day unfortunately....Player froze again on me the exact same day I got it back.

Straight back on the phone to Sony and a further 3 weeks later I got my "repaired" Vaio Pocket back. Ok grand, its been back to them twice, surely its fixed now....Just not my lucky day.

A day later the Vaio Player freezes AGAIN...by this stage I've had the player for 3 months and I've used a grand total of a week. Back on the phone to Sony. So out come DHL again, (at this stage my mam knows the DHL guy's wife) to take my player away off to France again.

I must note that everytime I have sent the player off I have had to contact Sony back myself and I think I recieved about 3 emails and 4 or 5 phonecalls over the whole 4 months I have dealt with them.

So I get an email off Sony stating that this is the fourth time I have sent it back to them and they would like to offer me a "refurbished" unit. This really pissed me off, as they have taken my unit and refurbished every time yet it just keeps breaking. So I told them something to the effect that they can shove it up their arse, I wanted a new unit if anything.

So Sony get back to 5 days later saying that they no longer make the Vaio Pocket so they will see what they can do about a refund for me. This seems like a better deal as I will get my money back and never have to deal with these muppets again. So that offer for a refund was 2, nearly 3 weeks ago now and I still have no sign of my refund...what a joke!

So the moral of the story is....Don't Buy Sony!

Wertz

I've had my vaio pocket for about 6 weeks now...not a bother on it.
Since I imported it from the US, I hope it stays that way. RMAing imported stuff is a sh*tload of trouble I'd imagine...

Having to update the firmware out of the box was a PITA but I like the player, I like the UI (finally got the hang of the sensor pad) and most of all I like the sound.
40gb player for €240...not too shabby.

Sony have a snazzy new HDD coming out next month....your post is making me think "Get rid of the Vaio before it breaks" and get one of those....but TBH I need the 40gb, and I'm not buying an apple...

garthv

Aye it was a great player to use, the layout was great and once you got used to the touchpad it was brilliant. But like my rant goes on about the support is sh*te and it looks to me like they never even fixed it each time I sent it back
Still havent heard anything about my refund!

Wertz

AFAIK the Vaio division of Sony is separate from their mainstream electronics branch....and Vaio deals almost exclusively with laptops. It wouldn't surprise me that they'd receive the player for repair and not be able to do f*ck all with it since it's an audio device. I'm sounding like a fanboi on that....
Having said that they should have offered a replacement straight off the bat, if they couldn't fix it. Being out of production isn't really an excuse...the HMP-1000 is in full production in Japan; I'm sure you'd have settled for one of those

Guy:Incognito

In fairness they could have told you to fup off back to where you bought it to look for the refund. Thats who owes you, so i'd count myself lucky.

GaRtH_V wrote:

Anyway, I sent the player off for the first time to France (Sony VAIO HQ), courtesy of DHL. DHL took 5 days to get out to my house, leave a few boxes and then another 3 days to pick up the boxes with the player inside them, not Sony's fault but they still should of kept a tab on DHL.
!

Whats the deal with that, why did they leave stuff in ur house?

Wertz

Yeah seems like I tempted fate by even posting in this thread...cycling to work this morning and the player locked up on me....when I tried to power it down it locked hard, the screen backlight wouldn't even go off.
I mean who carries a f*cking needle round with them to push the reset plate?
Reset it when I got home...seems to be okay.
This is the first problem I've had....I'm hoping it's just a blip.

garthv

Well its another week and yet still no refund from Sony. Got left a voicemail today saying it will be later on in the week before I hear anything...what a pack of shams

Whats the deal with that, why did they leave stuff in ur house?

Dunno, they did it twice, it was supposed to be for collection but they just left the boxes there and fùcked off

MarkR

The refunds do take quite some time. As for DHL, in some cases dhl will arrive, drop off the box and leave. In the box you'll find instructions on packaging your pocket, and advising how to get DHL to collect the packaged unit. Thought it was popped in the bag at the door though for the pockets...

Calling someone a sham? Not nice. Was going to ask for your case number to check. Couldn't be arsed now.

cgarvey

Why not return it to Cyberport.De for a full refund? It's them your contract is with, not Sony. Do you've to pay for the DHL service with Sony? If not, then that's an incentive alright, but add up all your time, and inconvenience, and it might make just as much sense to send it back to Cyberport (with details of all your correspondance with Sony)

.cg

garthv

Calling someone a sham? Not nice. Was going to ask for your case number to check. Couldn't be arsed now

Good Lord, you work for them....You dont want my case number....You would not believe how many times Ive called your helpdesk. Sort your bloody system out!I work in tech support myself, I know how the system works and you guys really need to get your act together

And it doesnt take 4 weeks to process a refund

/edit

Just got a phone call there...looks like I'll be getting my refund today...hopefully

garthv

Woohoo
Refund has been given. I will never ever buy a single Vaio product as long as I will live.

Karoma

want a iwillneverbuysonyagain.com email addy?:)

garthv

Haha, I could of done with one of them while I was dealing with them

Karoma

you could still use it for a tongue-in-cheek "thank you" response to the refund & ask VAIO to update your contact details.